


Let It Be Forgotten

by 0hHeyThereBigBadWolf



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Magical Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 21:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf/pseuds/0hHeyThereBigBadWolf
Summary: Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,Forgotten as a fire that was once singing gold.The dubious gift from the Monkey King helps Jacob stop the first domino from falling and breaking them all apart.





	Let It Be Forgotten

The tattoo didn’t go away when Apep was defeated.

The main part of it is gone, thankfully, but there is still a ring of black symbols inked around the upper part of Jacob’s forearm, just below his elbow. And there is still magic in it. It isn’t an obvious kind of magic, just a small tingling of energy that hums in his arm every now and again, and it’s something he tries very fervently to ignore. But every now and again, it refuses to be ignored.

When he touches someone, that tingling feeling grows stronger, and he can see into them. A gift of spirit, the Monkey King had called it. Which apparently meant he has the gift of _seeing_ into someone’s spirit. It’s hard to describe in words that make sense, but he gets a glimpse of their souls in that single touch, only a brief look, but it’s enough for him to know if someone is a good person or if they’re not, if they’re truly helpful or working towards ulterior motives. And as far as he’s seen, these little ‘glimpses’ are never wrong. Not once.

He tries to avoid it when he can. It’s personal and private, and to him, almost violating. Whenever his tattoo stings, he avoids touching anyone he can, and when he does, he makes sure it’s never direct skin-to-skin contact. And that works.

It doesn’t work on Jenkins, though. Instead, all Jacob gets is a hum of white noise, like a radio with no reception. It doesn’t work on Nicole, either, when he brushes against her in the barn. He wonders if it’s because they’re immortals, if that gives them a kind of buffer that keeps his gift out.

He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or bad, but he’s grateful for the quiet either way. He’s not sure he wants to know what’s in Nicole’s soul.

 

“Mr. Stone, I need you to finish the passage.”  
Nicole is dying, Jenkins is going to give her his immortality, and he wants Jacob to read the incantation to do it.

Cassandra’s almost in tears beside him, and Ezekiel looks just as wretched, and Jacob can’t do it. He can’t…knowingly allow Jenkins to do this, for a woman that might just be playing them for fools, for someone that’s had a few hundred years to plan this out. He looks down at Nicole’s still, blood-stained form on the table.

Jacob doesn’t know if this dubious little gift of his would even work; it hadn’t worked on her before, or on Jenkins. But Nicole is mortal _now,_ so…. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself against whatever he might see, and lays a hand on her wrist as he reaches for that tingling prickle of magic in his tattoo.

There’s no smell of sulphur or glowing eyes. No horns or pointy tail. Nicole looks just the same. But when Jacob touches her arm, the skin on his back tries to crawl away and hide. Every hair on his body stands up in nervous rows. And evil whispers through the room like some disturbing perfume on a breeze.

Looking into Nicole’s soul is like standing at the edge of an abyss and looking down into it. It’s a living, breathing thing, full of sharp edges and writhing shapes, cold and unremorseful, a seething hatred that’s been fed and nurtured and cultivated over hundreds of years until it has become an entity on its own. If there was anything of her that is still a Guardian, still the Nicole Noone that Flynn had known, it’s gone now, eaten alive from the inside out by that hunger.

He snatches his hand back, but it doesn’t matter. He can still feel it, and he scrubs his hand against the leg of his jeans to try and rid himself of that feeling.

Without realising it, he’s backed away from the table, stopping only when his back hits another of the workbenches. The Epic of Gilgamesh is on the floor where he’d dropped it, and over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, he realises that Jenkins is still speaking to him, asking him to finish the passage, to give up his immortality.

_“No!”_

The word is torn out of him in a near-scream, startling the others into silence. Jacob steps forward and kicks the epic away as hard as he can, sending it sliding away across the floor and under a cabinet. He’ll get an earful for treating it like that later, but it hardly matters now. In fact, he wants to do more than just kick it across a room, he wants to put it through a woodchipper and burn the pieces.

He looks at the hawthorn that’s growing around Jenkins’ hands and Nicole’s head, and for a single moment, he can see the shining tether of magic that runs between the Caretaker and the former Guardian, woven into the strands of the plant. And the magic in him, the lingering gift of the Monkey King, the magic that he’s been trying so hard to ignore and will away, surges up hot in his blood, and he can feel it race down his arm like electricity through a lightning rod when he points at the plant. _“Get away from him!”_

The hawthorn shrivels back as if scalded, tendrils curling up and wilting back into the clay pot. Jacob only just restrains himself from smashing it on the floor and stomping the hawthorn into a pulp.

“Stone, what are you doing?” Flynn shouts, grabbing his arm hard.

There is nothing more satisfying than the feeling of punching Flynn in the face. It lays him out flat on the floor, blood pouring out of a nose that might or might not be broken, knocking him out cold.

The room is stunned into complete silence, all eyes on him, and Jacob looks at their Caretaker, his breath coming in fast, shallow pants. “She’s a liar,” he gasps out. “I saw it, I saw into her, Jenkins, and she’s a liar. She doesn’t want to help us, she wants us gone, us, you, the Library, everything. She’s not on our side, she’s not—” He’s hyperventilating now, and he doesn’t know how to stop, already light-headed. There’s not enough air in the room, his chest feels too tight, and there’s no _air_ in here—

Large, strong hands clasp over his shoulders, guiding him back into a chair, and he has never in his life been so grateful for their immortal Caretaker and the warm, white-noise hum of his soul, helping to block out the rest of the world, push away that lingering sense of malevolence that’s clinging to him.

“Mr. Stone. Jacob. What did you see?” Jenkins asks with quiet yet firm insistence.

“Her. Inside.” He fumbles at his sleeve and pulls it back to show the black lines of the tattoo that are still there. “It’s from the Monkey King. A gift of spirit. When—when I touch someone, I-I can see into them, their spirit, their souls. And she’s not what she looks like, Jenkins. She’s _evil_. She doesn’t want to help us, she wants us all to _burn_. That’s all she is inside. Just hatred and revenge.”

The old knight looks at the tattoo with a frown, then back at Nicole’s still form on the table before his gaze returns to Jacob’s face. “You’re certain of this?”

“It’s not wrong. It’s never wrong,” he replies. “I won’t let you trade your life for hers. I won’t. I can’t.” They’d have to kill him first, because he will not do it. He cannot.

Eve steps closer, ignoring her unconscious Librarian on the ground. “Jenkins?” she asks.

Jacob can almost see the indecision on Jenkins’ face, and he wraps his hand around the knight’s wrist. “Let her go. Please. Just let her go. She’s gone and has been for a long time. Let her be gone.”

After a painful eternity of a moment, Jenkins lets out a deep sigh and shakes his head. “Mr. Jones, Ms. Cillian, will one of you find something to cover the body? She had no family, as I understand it. Her remains will be interred here, in the Hall of Remembrance,” he says at last.

Jacob slumps in relief, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. “Thank you,” he breathes out.

Jenkins pats his shoulder. “I am learning not to question the instincts of a Librarian like you, Mr. Stone.

 

The Hall of Remembrance is beneath the Library, a hall that seems to stretch on forever; the walls are covered in names and dates, of all the Librarians and Guardians of the past, their memories carved into the foundation of the Library itself.

Flynn is almost ready to add Jacob’s name to that wall when he comes to and finds out that they’ve let Nicole die.

“Flynn,” Jacob says quietly once Jenkins has read the rite of passing and magic has etched Nicole’s name into the wall; her ashes have been put in a vase, in the hollowed space behind her name in the wall. “Eve is your Guardian. She loves you. She wants to be with you forever, quite literally. Don’t throw that away. Nicole is in the past. Let her be the past.”

For a moment, it almost seems like Flynn is going to throw a punch right back, but then the starch just runs out of him, his shoulders slumping.

Jacob doesn’t expect an apology or even a handshake, but he knows that he’s right when Flynn turns away without another word and walks back up the stairs. He follows the other Librarian up the stairs to the Annex.

Eve’s already changed out of the black dress she’d worn to the ceremony, and Ezekiel is returning from the locker rooms in his daywear as well. “We’ve got a case. Stone, get changed.” She walks over and rests a hand on Flynn’s arm. “Are you coming?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m going to…say goodbye. And help Jenkins with the tethering ceremony,” he replies quietly.

Eve nods and leans in to kiss his cheek gently, then looks to Jacob, all business in the blink of an eye. “Go change, we’re out of here in a minute.”

“Alright. What kind of case is it?” Jacob asks, loosening the knot on his tie and slipping it over his head.

“Disappearances at a corporate team-building camp, of all places. C’mon, shake a leg, let’s go.”


End file.
